


Gasoline Guts; Gilded Mind

by decayinghorizon



Series: The Sharpest Lives [2]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 12:18:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6906856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decayinghorizon/pseuds/decayinghorizon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Together, they're opposing magnets, they're molten metals, they're pieces that fit. Apart, they just feel alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gasoline Guts; Gilded Mind

**Author's Note:**

> this is almost embarrassingly angsty and backstories are weird.  
> also, here's a song I really like with this if you're into it: [Natives - Blink 182](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWDkIjdHuQg)  
> and one I really like for FAHC Michael in particular: [Always Focused - Tiny Moving Parts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcIuUFKjVaw)

I.

It was a wet, cold night, but it wouldn't be for long; he was about to paint the city in flames. With a backpack full of bombs and a lighter in his pocket, he was ready for anything.

He had burns on his hands, layered scars from where he played too close to the fire his whole life. He smelled like smoke, reeked of heat and gasoline, kerosene, lighter fluid. Of burnt skin, of third degree, blackened, dead flesh.  
He's got a scar across his cheek from a hot poker straight out of the fireplace.  
He was five years old, and he cried when it touched his freckled skin.  
But after that, he couldn't get close enough to the flames, intimidated and completely enthralled all at once.

At 13, it was self-inflicted cigarette burns, lighters and open flames, swallowing smoke, wishing it would swallow him.

At 15, it was illegal fireworks in empty fields, glass embedded in his knuckles from shattering mirrors, despising his reflection and his faded, jagged scar. He hates the memory, the souvenir, the aftermath; but wishes he could feel it again, the scalding metal that changed his life.

They said he was ruthless, and he tried to be, but he was just a burned-up boy.

At 16, he built a bomb, joined a crew, slit a throat.  
And had a panic attack, after, shaking and crying with snot on his face and cooling blood dripping through the spaces between his fingers.  
Once he calmed down, he couldn't stop staring at the blade glinting in the moonlight, couldn't shake the feeling of flesh parting underneath it, of severed arteries, the end of a life.  
So he did it again.  
And again.  
Between lit matches and open flames there rose a monster, a newfound thirst for blood, another method of coping.  
He'd ignited a passion for murder, a viciousness he'd never felt before. He lost himself in it.

Fire was controlled until it wasn't, it was targeted until it grew too big to handle, spread over everything. But blood was a concentrated kind of chaos, a quick, clandestine fix to sustain him until he could lose himself in the detonation, the outward explosion of everything he pent up.  
Gasoline boy, always ready to ignite.

Ready to kill.

It was his legacy, the whispers on the street.  
People feared him, but he was always afraid, setting his problems ablaze just to watch them burn, parts of him always crumbling to ash with them until he was only cinders; the flame that had already burnt out, the defective flash paper that wouldn't catch the spark.  
It used to be so easy to catch fire. It was natural to him, the simplest thing in the world, a reflex and a gift, a savior, a release from everything dragging him down. But now he's char and dissipated smoke and lifeless waterlogged wood, and no matter how close to the fire he gets, he can't feel the heat anymore. 

But he can pretend.

II.

He made messes. It was just what he did, who he was. One moment, he'd be calm, collected, in control. And the next, he was jumping away from an explosion, throwing grenades and shooting guns, speeding in cars he never quite learned to drive right, with no recollection as to how he ended up there, in the middle of chaos and carnage.  
He didn't quite lose time, but saw everything in real-time slow motion, like everything was sped up and he was slowed down and couldn't ever seem to match pace or catch up.  
He didn't understand it, could never explain when every other member of the crew gathered around him, telling him off, asking him what the hell he was thinking as they checked him over for injuries. They didn't know, wouldn't have been able to comprehend it if they had.  
He knew he tended to live inside his imagination, that was probably part of it. He just lost hold of reality, sometimes, so caught up in what could be; he had make-believe and real life layered on top of each other, meshing together seamlessly and clashing terribly all at once. 

He had tried the medicines, his parents pushing pills and throwing money at whatever doctor claimed they could cure him, like he was defective, broken; like he wasn't human. They could easily spare the expense, especially if it meant no longer having a freak for a son, getting out of having their other exorbitantly rich friends asking questions at their weekly high-class dinner parties, at their black tie galas for charities they didn’t really care about. He wasn’t good for their image, nothing like his perfect brother, his beautiful sister.

He felt like an animal trapped in a cage, an exhibit to be ogled in a zoo, and all the meds and the doctors and the therapy did was push him further into himself, make him cower back into the safe places that fear forced him to create. 

He found an escape when he was 14, when his parents bought him a computer to get him out of their hair and push him out of their minds, and he discovered that he could write codes and calculate algorithms and create and destroy, delve deeper into the inner workings of a mind other than his own, lose himself in systems and machines and numbers, training his brain to think in ones and zeroes. He discovered what it was like to live in a moment, to be grounded and watch numbers on the screen fly from his fingers as he typed them, and somehow he was both ahead of himself and behind himself but he was there, he felt connected to reality, and that was all that mattered. 

He became infatuated with gold. 

Wealth and pride was what had made his parents push him away, what made him so alone, but gold felt warm and safe in a way that he couldn’t explain. Somehow, hiding himself behind gold-framed glasses made him distant, made him feel protected from the outside world, and he still needed that.  
His parents had always preferred silver, anyway.  
It was cold and far away, it was scorn and disregard, it was his father’s pristine cufflinks and his mother’s gleaming diamond rings, it was being alone in a big empty house that had always felt warmer than the people who lived there, wine red furnishings and oak wood banisters on marble staircases and closed doors and scathing looks.

So he claimed gold for himself, and it made him feel invincible, like everything he never thought he could be, like first prize, like somebody.

III.

They met on Valentine's day, more an ode to the massacre than it ever would be to the saint, a city on fire as they frolicked through the wreckage, leaving countless casualties behind. They complemented each other like yin and yang, anger and curiosity bouncing off of and into each other until they collided, creating chaos like they were born for it, dancing in the dark and the rain of ashes from the embers they sparked, calculation and spontaneity coexisting and intertwining, messy and delicate all at once, brutal but clean. Crashing fast cars that didn’t belong to them, red bull like an electrical charge through their veins. They were an effortless balance, a natural occurrence, neither of them tipping scales any way but in their favor, a partnership that paid off and left disaster in their wake, like tornado alley up in flames. 

The hacker and the pyromaniac, nice dynamite, boys on fire; they lived just on the edge of sanity, and forgot about it all when one spotted the other.


End file.
